by Linda Lovely
We stood under the nearest functioning lamppost about twenty feet from Stew’s body. The pooled light haloed Dixon’s frizzy white hair, making him look like Ronald McDonald’s grizzled grandpa.
While I summed up the situation, Bill tiptoed to the steamy six-person Jacuzzi. As a paramedic, he was qualified to pronounce Stew dead. After doing so, he studied the body and pointed out some bruising around Stew’s wrists.
“Zip ties?” the chief wondered. “D’you suppose the killer tied his wrists while he was out for the count and cut ’em loose once he was dead?”
Bill nodded. “That’s my guess.”
Dixon rang the Hollis County Sheriff’s Department to say we needed help pronto.
The chief’s ruddy face looked more mottled than usual, hinting at a bout of drinking or elevated blood pressure. He shook his head, hawked one up, and started to spit before he thought better of it. “Jesus H. Christ, you think someone fried Stew with a stunner in order to drown him? That’s just dandy. Suppose that’ll make all our boys prime suspects.”
The same notion had crossed my mind—though I didn’t think of Dear’s security force as “our boys.” It was no secret the chief preferred to hire men. Yet he figured my military career trumped my gender, so he overlooked my inability to scratch my nuts with the rest of his boys.
I paced off fifteen feet and circled the Jacuzzi, scanning the barren concrete. “Chief, the killer didn’t use a Taser. Even civilian models eject those confetti-like markers that I.D. each weapon. Our murderer couldn’t have picked them all up. Fortunately, that rules our weapons out.”
“Eh? Speak up, will you?” An ex-Marine, Dixon blamed his poor hearing on close encounters with exploding shells. The counterfeit waterfall’s gurgling wasn’t helping him. “Who else packs stunners—just other cops, right?”
I raised my voice a notch. “Anyone willing to part with a few hundred bucks can buy stun guns or Tasers on the Internet. But I haven’t a clue about all the options.”
Dixon looked back at the body and cracked his knuckles. “Stew Hartwell. Who on earth would want to kill him?” The chief’s interest in the body seemed strictly clinical; someone else would have to mourn the loss.
Poor Stew. My stomach did another samba. Then a white-hot anger flared in my gut. Stew didn’t deserve to die like this—a gothic comic book ending.
“If only I’d patrolled this area sooner…”
“Forget it, Marley, you couldn’t have saved him,” the chief said. “If you’d come earlier, you might be dead, too.”
Until the chief answered, I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud.
“You may have been one hot shot Army colonel, but even you can’t bring back the dead.”
Well, yes, once I could.
I was sixteen, a lifeguard. The boy was nine, chubby. When I hauled him from the depths, his lips were tinged with blue, as if the aqua water had dyed them. I breathed life into him. His fat cheeks turned from blue to pink like Mom’s hydrangeas after she added lime.
Life seemed effortless then. I could cheat death. No longer. The living slipped away.
I blinked away the vision to concentrate on Dixon’s monologue. “You know if someone hadn’t gotten cute, we might’ve figured he was an unlucky drunk who drowned ’cause he was three sheets to the wind.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Stew was known to knock back a few, and the hot tub sign is plastered with warnings for boozers. Guess the vegetables were meant to clue us in. Whoever killed Stew knew him, or at least his name.”
The churning murderer’s cauldron bubbled away without a conscience. How had the killer jimmied the timer to keep the Jacuzzi jets active? Tendrils of steam drifted from the super-sized hot tub.
“Jesus,” I muttered. “What kind of sicko would dream this up?”
Dixon shrugged. “I suppose those are Stew’s clothes. What possessed him to strip? Or do you think the killer undressed him?”
From our vantage point, we could see the clothing piled on the chair nearest his body. Car keys and a wallet sat atop Bermuda shorts.
“Say, is Stew’s car parked out front?” Dixon asked.
“I’ll go check.” An urge to escape the insanity for a moment drove me to volunteer. “There’s a tan Volvo parked on the far side of the lot. It could be Stew’s.”
***
After verifying the solitary car belonged to the victim, we cordoned off the crime scene and set up emergency floodlights to illuminate the area.
Three guards had joined Dixon and me. Two were fuzzy-cheeked youngsters, locals who wanted a job where they wouldn’t stink of fish or have to kowtow to tourists. Carrying a gun was a big bonus. I was the same age as their mommas so they ma’amed me to death. Dirty jokes tended to die on their lips as I approached. Tonight their nervous laughter teetered toward hysteria. Laughing at death is a reflex as well as a cliché.
Dixon grimaced when a cacophony of sirens announced the arrival of the Hollis County Sheriff and his mainland coterie. “Think they’d have more sense,” he mumbled. “Might as well have used a bullhorn. This racket is bound to bring out all the Nosey Parkers.”
Sure enough, lights clicked on in a smattering of the pricey homes hovering above the poolscape. Perched atop stilt-like piers, the silhouetted bungalows resembled scrawny cranes.
Chief Dixon swaggered over to greet Sheriff Winston Conroy and engaged in a ritual good ol’ boy greeting.
“Hey, Chief, hear you got something a tad more interesting than the usual heart attack,” said Sheriff Conroy. “Gives me a chance to show your raggedy-ass island to our new officer. Meet Deputy Braden Mann.”
The newcomer deputy appeared to be in his thirties. Old for a Lowcountry recruit. The lean, angular planes of his face were a bit weather-beaten, yet his limber physique spoke of resilient muscles and youthful energy. A straight back and commanding presence suggested he was used to giving the orders.
“Braden was a homicide cop in Atlanta,” said the sheriff. “Likes to fish and hunt though, so he can’t be all bad.” He motioned toward the road. “Coroner should pull in any minute. He was right behind us over the bridge. So what we got?”
As Dixon elaborated, the sheriff’s face clouded. “Well, I’ll be. How’d you find the body?”
Dixon nodded my way. “Marley here noticed the front gate unlocked and saw lights were out. Came round to investigate.”
The sheriff stole a sideways glance at me. His quizzical look took in my uniform and age—twenty-five years senior to Dear Island’s only other female officer, who was currently on maternity leave.
“Who do we have here, Chief, another city slicker in hiding? Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, ma’am.”
“Marley Clark. I work part-time for Chief Dixon.” We shook hands.
“Marley comes to us from the Pentagon, a colonel in Army Intelligence, no less.” The chief sounded as if he wanted to one-up the sheriff.
“Just a lieutenant colonel,” I corrected, not coveting a bogus promotion.
Dixon continued as though I hadn’t uttered a peep. “I told Marley she was too dang young to play retiree. Besides I like having someone my own age to talk to.”
The sheriff laughed. “Marley looks at least two decades younger than you, Dixon. Going to Clemson University did you in. You’ve aged like that bleu cheese the Ag school peddles.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dixon harrumphed. “Let’s get on with it.”
The sheriff’s sole CSI practitioner and the coroner went to work. I stood off to the side, huddled beside a lifeguard stand. The sharpened wind knifed through my soggy shirt. Massaging my arms to knead in warmth, I tried to recall my last conversation with Stew. When hands grazed my neck, I whirled, startled.
“It’s Marley, right?” the deputy asked. “I’m Braden.” He’d draped a jacket around my shoulders. My jitters knocked it to the ground. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” He smiled. “You look like you’re freezing.”
Before I could respond, he retrieved the jacket
and wrapped me in it. “Thanks, but I can’t take your coat.”
“Nonsense. I’m not wet—and bleeding. How bad are those cuts?” He motioned toward my bloody knees.
“It’s nothing.” I was surprised he’d noticed. In all the hubbub, no one else had. “A little alcohol and a few Band-aids and I’ll be fine.”
“Sit down and I’ll fetch a first-aid kit.” He vanished before I could object.
I’m not used to being fussed over, especially by a stranger. But arguing required too much energy. Besides, until the coroner finished, Braden and I had little to do beyond shivering. A poolside lounge chair beckoned, its cushions cold and wet with dew. I was too weary to be persnickety.
In a minute, Braden returned. He knelt and rolled up the legs of my trousers. Thankfully, I’d shaved my legs, a hit or miss proposition for a woman living alone. He bit open a wet gauze pack and daubed at the cuts with a square of white cotton. The alcohol stung, but his hands felt warm, his fingers gentle. Despite the pain and cold, I began to relax. By the time he pressed down the last bandage I almost wished there were more cuts for him to doctor.
Braden snapped the first-aid kit closed and stood.
“Thanks again.” I looked up and noticed Chief Dixon hovering. He dipped his chin toward Braden. “Sheriff wants you.”
Then Dixon inclined his head in the direction of several bathrobe-clad residents clustered at the clubhouse entrance. He shooed me their way. “Marley, go deal with ’em, will ya?”
I slipped my arms into the deputy’s loaner jacket and walked toward the residents. Recognizing the ringleader—Joe Reddick—I groaned inwardly. Recently elected to the board of the Dear Owners’ Association, the former schoolteacher was puffed up with self-importance. He’d retired early after a “pain-and-suffering” lawsuit yielded a hefty insurance settlement. My hunch was the little Napoleon had been unable to control his classroom and still itched to prove he could be boss.
“It’s four a.m. I demand to know what’s going on,” Reddick blustered, grandstanding for the gathered throng.
“There’s been a drowning.” My tone straddled the territory between icy and polite. “We don’t know what happened yet.”
Reddick stuck out his lower jaw and crossed his arms over a protruding gut. “Well, I plan to find out. That’s the sheriff, isn’t it? You can’t keep us in the dark. We’re entitled to hear what’s what. I’m going to talk to him.”
I stepped directly in the fifty-year-old’s path and tried reason. “This is police business. The coroner is here, and the area’s off-limits.”
“We’ll see.” Reddick attempted to dart around me.
My reaction was instantaneous and calamitous—for Reddick, that is. To counter his feint, I raised my arm like a traffic cop. He ran straight into it. His own momentum undid him. He stumbled and fell in a heap, clutching his throat as if he’d been garroted.
“Sorry,” I muttered and offered a hand up. He wheezed and waved me off.
“Did you see her?” he stammered, showboating for his pajama-clad cohorts. “There’s no room on our security force for thugs.” His dentures lost their grip, and his attempts to click them back into place failed. “I’ll p-p-press charges.”
My initial chagrin at accidentally decking the guy turned to disgust. I thought of poor Stew lying dead and this jerk hoping to capitalize on the drama.
“That’s right, you’re the lawsuit king. Well, other folks work for a living, and that means the sheriff’s still too busy to talk to you.”
Reddick’s performance must have convinced the rest of the rabble-rousers I was a deadly Kung Fu master. Quaking, they backed away like Chihuahuas facing a pit bull.
“The excitement’s over for tonight. Go back to bed. That would help the authorities most.”
God knows we need all the help we can get.
***
About Author Linda Lovely
A native of Iowa, Linda has called the South home for more than thirty years. She lives with her husband beside a peaceful South Carolina lake, where she regularly perturbs the geese and one honking big turtle by jumping off her dock for a swim or pedaling (yes, pedaling not paddling) her kayak. Linda is a member of Romance Writers of America (RWA), Sisters in Crime, and the South Carolina Writers Workshop. She feels quite lucky to have found both close friends and exceptional critique partners—snarky, funny, talented and generous—through these organizations.
Linda can’t imagine going to bed at night without a book in hand. Thankfully her husband shares her passion for reading so she doesn’t have to use a miner’s light to indulge her nocturnal habits.
DEAR KILLER was selected as a finalist in the Golden Quill competition for best novels published in 2011. Her manuscripts have made the finals in 15 other contests, including RWA’s prestigious Golden Heart® and Daphne du Maurier competitions and mystery contests such as Deadly Ink, Murder in the Grove and Malice Domestic. Her stories dish up a main course of suspense, action and adventure with a generous side of romance.
For more information about the author, visit her website: www.lindalovely.com.
